Photos released by the BBC show British special forces on the frontline in Syria.

The BBC claims the small contingent is helping “Syrian rebels” defend a base against the Islamic State.

In this case it is British special forces, seen for the first time on the ground, inside Syria, in photographs obtained by the BBC.

The pictures, which date from June, follow an attack by the so-called Islamic State (IS) on the moderate rebel New Syrian Army base of Al Tanaf on the Syria-Iraq border. The British soldiers appear to be securing the base’s perimeter.

The New Syrian Army (NSA) is a CIA created mercenary group. It was deployed at al-Tanf in southeastern Syria, near the Jordanian border, in late 2015. It is associated with another manufactured rebel group, Ahmad al-Abdo Martyrs Brigades and Battalions.

There are few if any secular or moderate mercenary forces operating in Syria, a fact reported by The New York Times.

“The Free Syrian Army and the Syrian National Council, the vaunted bulwarks of the moderate opposition, only really exist in hotel lobbies and the minds of Western diplomats,” writes Ben Reynolds. “On the ground, Jabhat al-Nusra, the Islamic Front, and other rebel groups have joined together in fighting against the regime, the Kurds, and ISIS. While coordination between rebel groups is often pragmatic, fighters and weapons tend to bleed between them. Units nominally under the command of the FSA joined Jabhat al-Nusra in 2013, and Nusra forces have merged into ISIS. There is simply no real separation between “moderate” rebel groups and hardline Salafists allied with al-Qaeda. As Aron Lund of the Carnegie Endowment stated, “You are not going to find this neat, clean, secular rebel group that respects human rights and that is waiting and ready because they don’t exist.”

As Gareth Porter pointed out in February, there is little separation between mercenary groups vetted by the CIA and al-Nusra and other radical Islamists.

At least since 2014 the Obama administration has armed a number of Syrian rebel groups even though it knew the groups were coordinating closely with the Nusra Front, which was simultaneously getting arms from Turkey and Qatar. The strategy called for supplying TOW anti-tank missiles to the “Syrian Revolutionaries Front” (SRF) as the core of a client Syrian army that would be independent of the Nusra Front.

However, when a combined force of Nusra and non-jihadist brigades including the SRF captured the Syrian army base at Wadi al-Deif in December 2014, the truth began to emerge. The SRF and other groups to which the United States had supplied TOW missiles had fought under Nusra’s command to capture the base.

The CIA has provided support and munitions to a number of mercenary groups, including: